Somewhere on the Journey but Looking for Home

Yesterday's Friday Five asked about who we would take on the journey with us. Lent really is a journey and it can be difficult one. I've struggled this year with Lent, heck I've struggled with just about everything this year. In May, I packed up my 1998 Toyota Camry and pointed my car West to return home. I left three years of my life in Boston. I left good friends and a few people that I love very deeply. I must have cried through all of NY state and still don't know if I'm home. I don't know what home feels like right now. I feel as if I'm in a sort of, Interim Life. I can't go back but I don't know what is coming in the future. I'm here in Saint Cloud, MN and I have torn apart most of life in the last three years. Now I've put much of it back together in a way that makes more sense to me but there still seems to be something lacking. So this year for Lent I took on a practice that I haven't done in many years. I'm doing a devotional workbook. To be more specific I'm doing this devotional workbook. It's a devotional workbook for lesbian and gay Christians. I went on the reconciling journey of being bisexual and Christian many many years ago but I felt drawn to this book at this time. I also feel called to share this journey with you.

I'm on day three of the workbook and this is where I'm "Mapping My Spiritual Journey" so to speak. Today's exercise is asking me to list all the places I've lived and to remember the sights, sounds, and smells I associate with them. To look at what feelings come up when I think of them.

When I was young, my families journey was about moving every 4 years at least. The only house we ever lived in that recall with fond memories was in a little town called Warwick. It was in New York State. That's Warwick below.



When I lived there, it felt like home. Mostly it smelled like farms but when you were in town it smelled like bubble gum and shoe polish. I remember going to the river, it was really a little stream, and catching tadpoles. I remember being happy. I knew, as only a child could, that God was present in my life. We moved after only living there for two years. We moved back to New Jersey. Into a pink house (it didn't stay pink for long) on Windsor Drive. I didn't, and still don't, like that house. It holds painful stories for me. I went to church and loved God but I was never able to feel God there like I could in NY. It was in that Windsor Drive house that my sister began drinking and hitting me. It was in that house that I sustained most of my scars, both physical and emotional. It was in that house that my family fell apart. It was my very own house of cards. It was in that house that I first began to question God's existence because for the first time I felt what being alone really means. How did I get from that kid who doesn't believe God exists, to who I am today?